Back in 2005, the British Film Institute issued a handsomely restored version of Gojira/Godzilla, giving many UK cinemagoers their first chance to see Ishiro Honda's groundbreaking creature-feature as it originally appeared in Japan in 1954. Shorn of the post-hoc Hollywood scenes that gave Raymond Burr a starring role in the redubbed Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, the intact Toho Studio's production exhibited a depth and poignancy missing from international release versions – a sense of apocalyptic melancholia fired by the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and rekindled by the fallout of nuclear testing in the Pacific. A 1954 documentary short, The Japanese Fishermen, which appended the subsequent BFI DVD release, tied the fantasy of Gojira back to the harsh reality of life in nuclear age, with the fate of the crew of the ironically named Lucky Dragon 5 providing irradiated background inspiration for Honda's fiercely intelligent movie.

While British director Gareth Edwards's jaw-dropping Godzilla may not have the depth of Honda's original, it exhibits an appreciation and understanding of what made that movie great, alongside a healthy contempt for the mind-numbing vacuity of Roland Emmerich's headache-inducing 1998 reboot. With his terrifying size tempered by an oddly endearing scaly-dog face (the designers cite bears and komodo dragons as inspirational), Edwards's "monster" emerges as an awe-inspiring noble beast; a cross between the massive kaiju of Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim and a fiercely loyal overgrown bull mastiff. And just as Gojira transmuted over the course of several movies from fire-breathing scourge to savage saviour, so Edwards's lonely samurai dinosaur emerges from the depths as an avenging angel, safeguarding the natural order so blithely abandoned by man.

Things get off to a flying start with a terrific opening sequence that places grainy images of a giant reptile amid the faux archival blur of Bikini Atoll. From here we fast-forward to a nuclear family (mother, father, son) being torn apart as an atomic reactor falls prey to a "natural disaster" with shades of Fukushima. Leap ahead again and the traumatised young son has grown into bomb-disposal expert Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), taken away from wife Elle (Elizabeth Olsen) by news of his dad Joe's arrest in Japan for trespassing upon the radioactive ground where his home and workplace once stood proud. Racked with guilt, Joe (Bryan Cranston) has become a cracked conspiracy theorist, convinced that the government are hiding something. Which, of course, they are – albeit not quite what Joe expected.

For the first hour of its running time, Godzilla is judicious with its spectacular displays, concentrating on character development in a manner that will be familiar to fans of Edwards's first feature, 2010's Monsters. The discovery of an underground lair nods toward Alien in more than just Giger-esque design; a repeated riff from Alexandre Desplat's score seems to quote Jerry Goldsmith, just as the heavily trailered strains of Ligeti later echo the Star Gate sequence from 2001. Directors invoke such comparisons at their peril, but in Edwards's case there's something perversely admirable about daring to aim so high, proving that he's not frightened of taking his subject matter seriously.

Godzilla: 'for its first hour, it is judicious with its spectacular displays'.t's l Photograph: c.Warner Br/Everett/REX

Such confidence is all the more remarkable since Edwards is here wrestling a multimillion dollar blockbuster beast (a reported $160m) the size and scale of which is utterly incomparable with the homemade micro-budget Monsters, in which he self-shot all the live footage on the hoof and then knocked up the special effects in his bedroom. Impressively, many of the tropes that made Monsters an unexpected indie hit remain, notably the tangible tenderness in the central human relationships, which just happen to be interrupted by the arrival of massive marauders. Similarly idiomatic is a Clive Barker-style affection for the creatures; a sequence in which two monstrous mantis-like "mutos" (escapees from Starship Troopers?) rub heads amid the carnage reminds us of the bittersweet denouement of Monsters, the title of which was as pointedly ironic as that of Tod Browning's Freaks. No surprise to learn that motion-capture maestro Andy Serkis was enlisted to help "control the souls" of the beasts in key scenes, the tragic figure of King Kong lurking in the shadows as skyscrapers tumble and chaos reigns.

In the middle of the maelstrom is Ken Watanabe, smartly cast (for both narrative and marketing purposes) as the one man who understands the true nature of Gojira's resurrection (he uses the original name once, before reverting to the anglicised Godzilla) and who gives voice to the eco-anxieties of Max Borenstein's radiation-driven script. Other supporting roles are inevitably more sketchy, most notably a tremulous Sally Hawkins who gets all but lost in the mix as we move toward the increasingly catastrophised third act wherein destruction takes hold as (human) character inevitably takes a back seat. How much this bothers you probably depends upon the size of the screen on which you see Godzilla. My advice would be to seek out the biggest, loudest Imax auditorium available and allow the movie to roar majestically right in your face, peeling away any niggling uncertainties with the icy fire of its thunderous breath.